This is for PHP package authors to require in their composer.json. It will install their package to the correct location based on the specified package type.

The goal of Installers is to be a simple package type to install path map. Users can also customize the install path per package and package authors can modify the package name upon installing.

Installers isn't intended on replacing all custom installers. If your package requires special installation handling then by all means, create a custom installer to handle it.

Natively Supported Frameworks:

The following frameworks natively work with Composer and will be installed to the default vendor directory. composer/installers is not needed to install packages with these frameworks:

Aura

Symfony2

Yii

Yii2

Current Supported Package Types

Stable types are marked as bold, this means that installation paths for those type will not be changed. Any adjustment for those types would require creation of brand new type that will cover required changes.

This is an example for a CakePHP plugin. The only important parts to set in your composer.json file are "type": "cakephp-plugin" which describes what your package is and "require": { "composer/installers": "~1.0" } which tells composer to load the custom installers.

These would use your custom path for each of the listed packages. The available variables to use in your paths are: {$name}, {$vendor}, {$type}.

Custom Install Names

If you're a package author and need your package to be named differently when installed consider using the installer-name extra.

For example you have a package named shama/cakephp-ftp with the type cakephp-plugin. Installing with composer/installers would install to the path Plugin/CakephpFtp. Due to the strict naming conventions, you as a package author actually need the package to be named and installed to Plugin/Ftp. Using the following config within your packagecomposer.json will allow this:

Please note the name entered into installer-name will be the final and will not be inflected.

Should we allow dynamic package types or paths? No.

What are they? The ability for a package author to determine where a package will be installed either through setting the path directly in their composer.json or through a dynamic package type: "type": "framework-install-here".

It has been proposed many times. Even implemented once early on and then removed. Installers won't do this because it would allow a single package author to wipe out entire folders without the user's consent. That user would then come here to yell at us.